BETWEEN THE LINES

What if future GOP prez played by Obama rules?

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians, and the End of the Age." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union.

Among the many constitutional outrages Barack Obama has perpetrated on the country is unilaterally amending legislation duly passed by Congress with a stroke of the pen.

He’s done it several times now with Obamacare alone, perhaps thinking that since the monstrous law has been dubbed with his name he therefore has the power to change its terms.

The latest example is his decision to delay compliance with the law for employers for three more years.

Now think about this.

If Obama has the power to delay certain provisions of the law for three years, would not his successors have the power to delay other provisions, or the same provisions, or even enforcement of the entire law for, say, 50 years?

It would be a quantitative difference, but would it be a qualitative difference?

Somehow, I suspect, those who today wink at the constitutional abuses by Obama would be the very same people screaming at the top of their lungs should a future Republican president try this “stroke-of-the-pen, law-of-the-land” trickery in 2017 or beyond.

Do you agree?

But Obama gets away with it.

And Republicans don’t even have the courage to play this game. Republican legislators keep telling us there is nothing they can do about Obamacare unless the American people give them majorities in both house of Congress and a Republican president.

On what basis are we to thus empower them?

Their word?

In 2010, Republicans won the House of Representatives in part by pledging to stop government borrowing. With control of the House alone, Republicans have had for three years the absolute power to freeze the debt limit and force the federal government to start living within its means immediately. But they haven’t done it. They haven’t even threatened to do it.

Remember, it takes both houses of Congress and the signature of the president to increase the debt limit. But time after time enough Republicans have voted with the Democrats in the House to provide Obama with all the borrowed money he wants to spend – including for the funding of Obamacare.

In fact, it was the leadership of the House Republicans who so voted.

What does this suggest to you?

House Republicans choose their leaders. Their leaders vote differently than the members do on the most important issues facing the House. But the Republican members don’t dump their leaders.

This suggests to me the majority of Republican members either care more about the perks of office that are bestowed upon them by leadership or they really don’t want to stop borrowing that will either crash the economy or shut down much of government for good in the near-term future. It also suggests to me most House Republicans either don’t have the stomach for a real fight to save the country or don’t really mind Obamacare as much as they claim.

Do I have this about right?

If not, maybe someone can explain to me why all but a handful of courageous and principled Republican members of House and Senate have served as enablers of Obama for the last five years.

When you have absolute veto power over the nearly $1 trillion a year Washington borrows, and that money is vitally necessary to fund Obamacare, and you approve it anyway, what else can you call that but enabling?

In fact, I’m being kind with my choice of words.

Here are some synonyms for “enable”:

empower

facilitate

implement

permit

approve

I could go on and on. But you get the point. The Republican establishment has not opposed Obama. It has empowered him, facilitated him, implemented his agenda, permitted him to destroy the country and approved of his policies.

There has been no real opposition.

But they would still like you to believe the only answer to Obama’s carnage is to give Republicans control of both houses of Congress and the presidency.

Let me ask you two questions:

If John Boehner is still the House speaker in 2015, do we really expect him to govern any differently?

If Mitch McConnell is the Senate majority leader rather than the Senate minority leader, do we really expect him to govern any differently?

That would be like doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

And if Republicans in the House and Senate really believe Obama is acting extra-constitutionally, why do they continue to help him burn the Constitution by providing the matches?